Friday 5.16.14 Well, last week’s exhaustion morphed into a week of daily sleepiness, brought on by nightly sleeplessness, waking up at 3 or 4 a.m. every morning and not being able to fall back to sleep until five (5) minutes before the alarm went off. Still crazy busy at work. My boss has been getting ready to go on vacation, for the first time in like 15 years, so we sent out notices to our customers so they could pre-order their print jobs. Among other projects, I am in the process of typesetting an 84-page book for a local county fair, which includes a new cover design. I offered to do said cover design for the customer on a freelance basis if my work schedule didn’t lighten up. I had cleared my freelance design option with my boss shortly after starting work for him (2-1/2 years ago), because he didn’t feel like “we” could charge enough to warrant doing it in-house. He said he was fine with my freelancing. Truth be told, I think he figured I wouldn’t have many opportunities, and he was right: I haven’t had many opportunities. And when I do, I manage to find the time to do it “on the clock” in my “downtime” and chalk it up to a learning-on-the-job experience, and we simply charge a minimum. (The minimum usually being zero. Which could explain why I’m still making only barely above minimum wage.) Well, the Fair Book People are interested in a new cover design, and since it’s been so insane lately, I made a point of telling my boss that I had offered to do it on a freelance basis (actually they asked me). The only reason I even mentioned it to him, was so that I could plan the design/artwork around the limitations of the print requirements (ink colors, bleeds, paper stock, etc.) The job needs to go on press like the day he gets back from vacation and I wanted to be ready. We got into a ridiculous argument, which I won, I guess. Here’s how the conversation went: Me: “The Tri-County Fair Board wants a new cover design that looks like that poster in the window that we did for [another customer]. Since we’ve (I’ve) been so crazy busy lately, I offered to do it freelance. Can you tell me what I need to know to have it set up properly so it can go straight to press when you get back?” Boss: “Piece of cake. You can do your background in Corel Draw or Illustrator, whatever you want. Save it as a jpeg or a tiff, and drop it into Page Maker and build the rest of the file (page layout, text, graphics, etc.) in that file. You can bleed it off of three sides if you need to.” [For the uninformed, Page Maker is an {antiquated, nearly obsolete} page layout program, not a graphics program. It has very limited artistic capabilities. It’s awesome for basic stuff, but limited in its creative aspects.] Me: “Well, I might need to stretch some type, play with the graphics, etc., (blah, blah, blah).” Boss: “Do whatever you want, as long as you end up with a Page Maker file.” (There is no solid basis for this requirement on his part, other than he HATES NEW TECHNOLOGY, and not a day goes by that he doesn’t remind the entire world of that fact.) Me: “So, do I need to limit myself to one-color of ink, or can I go with a 2-color design?” [The customer’s budget would allow either.) Boss: “Well, I think you could make it work (achieve the customer’s desired effect) with 1-color but, hey, if you want to go all crazy, knock yourself out. If you think you need two colors to make it work, you might as well get a printing price from 4-over (an online digital printing company we outsource to on a regular basis, with a healthy profit margin built in). He continued, “Why should I be bothered with the added labor necessitated by a fancy design job? Make someone else do it. Oh, and make sure you see if they will send the covers to us folded, and if not, you better be sure they are printing it so that the fold runs with the grain of the paper, otherwise it will be impossible to fold on my machine. You need to start thinking like a printer and stop being an artist.” [At this point, his sarcasm and passive-aggressive nature is starting to chime in.] Boss (continued): “You know, we (you) need to stop selling design services altogether. We are a print shop, not a design house. We can’t charge enough money to justify that crap (read: new technology).” Me: “Well, that’s why I offered to do it on a freelance basis. We’ve had this conversation before and you said it was okay.” Boss: “Fine, do whatever you want. Go ahead and steal business from the company.” Me: “How am I stealing business from the company? (I have once before, many, many years ago, been fired from a job for “stealing” business by freelancing, which I disclosed to him from the beginning, because it was a concern of mine; I reminded him of this fact.) You said you don’t have a problem with it. Besides, you say we’re not a design firm; you don’t even want to sell the service. I say, I’ll do it on regular company time if my schedule permits, or you can pay me overtime to do it over my regular hours, and you can charge the customer, or I can freelance the job, because any way at all, they are willing to pay. Boss: “You know what, why don’t you just leave it for me and I can do it at 4 a.m. when I get back from Florida on the 23rd and before I leave for Kansas on the 24th. That way it won’t cost me or the customer a penny, because my time isn’t worth anything.” (YES, he really said that. And he says it on a regular basis.) Boss (continuing): “Oh, never mind me. I’m just stressed. Do whatever you want. Go ahead, do your freelance thing, charge the customer a couple hundred bucks, whatever you want. Go ahead and steal from me. It’s okay.” That’s when I got pissed. It turned into a shouting match at that point, me shouting, him trying to calm me down. Me: “So, I should do it on company time, if I have the time. Or, you’re okay with me doing it on a freelance basis. And I’m not going to get fired?!” I’m pounding my fists on the tray-table between us. I’m raising my voice. I’m near tears, or violence, or walking out. (Remember, I haven’t been sleeping well.) Boss: No, silly, you’re not going to get fired!” Really, I’m fine with whatever you want to do.” Then he gave me a high-five. Followed by a hug. Know what I’m going to do? Today was his first day of vacation. Apparently all the customers who got the “off-line” notice think we’re closed for the duration, cuz the phone rang like twice all day. I spent the day shopping for mattresses online and I think I’ll do the cover design on company time and bill it as a freelance job. No, I won’t. I have morals. But man, he can be an ass sometimes. It’s still the best gig in (this) town. For as long as I’m in (this) town.